Poor guy seems to be going through some self hating racism crisis after reading too many twitter posts. He’s probably a nice guy and all but this online thing can get way too much.
I know you're just saying that because you've never met my parents. But consider that my dad packed us all up, left a country where we were rich, and moved us to the most stereotypical 1950s-style red-state suburb he could find.[1] But no, I'm sure it was Twitter...
Joking aside, we are on opposite sides of a sociological debate. Is Bangladesh a crappy country because of external factors, or because of the culture and choices of the people who live there? It's not crazy to ask that question, and stop pretending that it is. What's ironic is that most Bangladeshis (not the ones raised in the west) fall in the "culture" camp. My family is particularly negative on Bangladeshi culture--especially my mom (growing up as a woman in a Muslim country will do that)--but none of my views are remarkable in my extended family. Or even in Asia more generally. One of the greatest success stories in third world development is Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew adamantly believed that "culture is destiny" and that principle guided the incredible results he achieved in Singapore: https://paulbacon.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/z....
[1] I was at a cousin's wedding a few years ago, and I complained that I couldn't find anyone on Facebook because in our culture we don't have family names. Everyone has two given names, but goes by a nickname which is completely unrelated to either given name. My dad responded, "Bangladeshis don't know how to name their children." I reflexively tried to say, "no, they just do it differently." Then I stopped myself, because why the fuck should I whitesplain the merits of naming conventions to my father.
I have, or rather, had, a friend that lost it. He was the nicest guy. Then 9/11 happened and both him and his wife got into this 'it's all special effects' (they worked in special effects) thing and there wasn't anything you could do about it. Intelligent, creative, very skilled. But on that subject they were completely dug in and any evidence to the contrary was dismissed. Their parting words were that I must be 'one of them' and we are no longer friends.
There are a couple of subjects that seem to do this to people, immigration is one of them, 9/11 is another. Then there are holocaust deniers and people who seem to - without any kind of prompting - find it in them to be defending the actions of the various strong-arm government components in the United States.
I have no idea if there is something in the water or not but it is very scary to see otherwise intelligent people completely lose it over such objectively simple things. Once dug in the only solution seems to be to dig further and to cut off all input to that might lead to introspection.
I’m sure it’s Twitter, and not the fact I had to go to the airport with an armed escort the last time I visited, or that I had to cancel my most recent trip because they overthrew the government, again.
